DUSHANBE, July 16, 2010, Asia-Plus — President Obama and his administration are seriously concerned over tragic events that took place in southern Kyrgyzstan and are doing utmost so that they would not be repeated in other countries of the Central Asia region, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia on the National Security Staff, Michael McFaul, stated at a news conference in Dushanbe yesterday, following a meeting with President Emomali Rahmon.
Only through joint efforts we will be able to prevent deterioration of the situation in Kyrgyzstan and the Central Asian region as a whole,” a top adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama said.
Mr. McFaul noted that he and President Rahmon had also discussed issues related to stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan. “Tajikistan and the United States have similar stances on ways to settle the Afghan problems; it, first of all, concerns reconstruction of the economy of this country, implementation of energy, communications and transportation projects,” he stressed.
On the transit of cargo bound for Afghanistan via territories of Central Asia’s countries, McFaul said that the United States was satisfied with the level of cooperation with the countries of the region on that subject. “We appreciate Tajik Government’s cooperation in solving Afghan problems,” he said.
McFaul also noted that his country has provided assistance to the Government of Tajikistan with mitigating effects of the global financial and economic crisis. “This year, US aid package to Tajikistan will be more than 50 million U.S. dollars,” he said.
U.S. official also noted that they were well aware of Tajikistan’s huge potential in the fields of hydropower and transportation. “President Rahmon and me also discussed issues related to cooperation between our countries in these directions,” McFaul said.
He also noted that during his stay in Dushanbe he had also met with representatives from political parties and intended to hold meeting with representatives of civil society of Tajikistan.
Michael McFaul has been Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia on the National Security Staff since January 2009. He served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Obama during his presidential campaign. He is on leave from Stanford University, where he was the President and Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directed the Iran Democracy Project He also is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Deputy Director of FSI.
Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his Ph.D. in International Relations in 1991.
